Arts Education Seen as Common-Core Partner

Michelle Grohe, the director of school and teacher programs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, leads students from the Edward M. Kennedy Academy in discussions about the works of art. In partnership with four Boston schools, the museum uses its extensive collection to help teach some of the common standards in English/language…

Feeling ill: Common cold or common core?

By Christopher Lehman on December 13th, 2012 

Smart Brief

Cultivating The Next Generation Of School Leaders

by Shael Polakow-Suransky, at 11:57 am

Gotham Schools

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Students Evaluating Teachers

Can a Leader Be Effective and Liked?

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Allison Vaillancourt (University of Arizona/Tucson) describes how two new academic honchos in her university have been making bold changes without the usual moaning and groaning from the troops. When Vaillancourt described this puzzling phenomenon to a friend, the response was, “If no one is pushing back, they clearly aren’t pushing hard…

The 5 Most Persuasive Words in the English Language…

How I Replaced Shakespeare

I was not worried about the American education system until after I started writing a column, because that's when I found out there are English teachers who assign my column as reading material. I regularly get e-mails from students asking about my use of anastrophe, metonymy, thesis…

Bar exams for teachers?

By Chester E. Finn, Jr.

As President of the AFT, the late Albert Shanker was instrumental in creating the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and much else in the education-reform world. Now Randi Weingarten is trying—earnestly and imaginatively—to return the organization and its (present) leader to the pantheon of real reformers.

Their new and much-ballyhooed proposal, contained in a report…

Getting real about the Common Core

By Checker E. Finn, Jr. / December 6, 2012

A foundation staffer I think well of posed these vexing questions the other day:

With the transition to the new Common Core assessments, states will have a number of decisions around how they use the new tests. Some of the most consequential are around possible use of the tests for high school exit or grade promotion. These are obviously sticky subjects. Should we be…